6. Fridged Logic

. . .

"You're the designated kid-wrangler for the foreseeable future." May glanced in the rear-view mirror to see the demigod where he lay half-flopped along the wide back seat, knees up and a hand rubbing hard at his forehead.

"Joy."

Simmons giggled at his subdued weariness in the passenger seat as she looked down at her tablet. "You did marvelously. I agree, that envelope she described is what Stutgart burned. But if the other victims don't have one to examine, I don't know what to do with that information. Still, it's something we can cling to."

"Got it in the system?" May watched Simmons nod, taking one hand off the wheel to fish out her phone when it jingled a priority call. She pulled up to a red light before checking the name on the screen. "Officer Tomlinson," she said, then activated it. "Agent May."

"We got trouble."

"Hold on." May instinctively glanced at her team first to assess their safety, following it up with a full visual sweep of her surroundings. Nothing caught her eye. She jerked the SUV through the red light, getting Simmons' startled attention and not caring. Once out of sight of the main thoroughfare, she pulled into an alley and let the vehicle idle. "You've got my attention, Tomlinson. What's going on?"

"Three suits came into the station and cozied up to our jerkass medical examiner. Say you folks ain't who you say you are." The questions were clear in his voice. "Wondering if that part might not be a little true, but not my whole concern here."

"Officer, I will tell you this much – your victim is absolutely our jurisdiction and we want to do all we can to find out what happened to him and why. That's my sworn word on the topic." Jemma's eyes were huge as May talked.

"CIA? Naw, forget it." A rustle came from the other end of the line. She could tell he was in civvies by the scratch of denim. "They're back down in the morgue again but probably won't be there long. I'm wondering if they're gonna walk with the body. Chief's delaying them best he can, paperwork and other bull, but he's staying in his office and out of the scene directly for a few."

May glanced up and saw that Loki was upright and fully focused as well. It occurred to her to wonder if his hearing was good enough to pick up both ends of the conversation. Aliens. Well, the job was always different. "I'm appreciating the dime-drop, Officer, but kind of surprised to get it, considering. What caught your eye?"

"These guys made a big stink in the Chief's office about not verifying you through the Columbia bureau. So I wandered out and made a call to a friend of a friend because something about that sounded off to me. Just got the word back. They're not from there, either."

The hand that was still on the SUV's wheel tightened until the plasticky leather squeaked. This could mean a simple investigation was about to get dangerously complex. She thought fast. "I'm going to ask a favor and you are fully within your rights to decline, Darnell. What I need could get you fired when what should happen is we get the hell out of your life and you make Detective someday."

"I like the street. Broward's got my back, ma'am. He knows I'm calling. New guard lining up against the old, story of the South."

She told him where to meet her and rang off, looking at her two agents in turn. "I'm getting to the meet on foot," she told them. "You guys are bugging out. Forget Stutgart's place for now, neither lead we've got goes back there. It's a three hour trip from here to the prior victim."

"Nurse Kistler, the practitioner."

May nodded to her. "Simmons, you're driving. Loki, cover tracks." She tapped on the roof of the car.

She saw him blink once, slowly. "Done. I hope everyone likes old grey Chevys. Should be anonymous enough, I think."

"Perfect." She nodded to Jemma. "Be careful. We don't know if these mystery guys got to the other victims before they caught up here. Toss Kistler's house first and see if this envelope thing bears out. If it exists, maybe it got missed. Then get into the morgue and do a verification on what you found here, if possible. It may not be." She turned to look at Loki. "That's your job; cover infiltration and watch for complications. Work fast. Keep yourselves safe. Do not engage in a fight. If you think you're even close to getting cornered, retreat back to base."

He smiled, one of those grim and predatory ones. "Conflict will be well avoidable."

May actually didn't doubt that, but it was her job to consider the worst case scenario no matter what. She popped her seatbelt and got ready to slide out. "Hope so. I'll be in touch."

Simmons scooted over into the driver's seat as May moved. "Good luck." She looked over her shoulder. "Want the passenger's? It'd be a help to have you set the GPS while I get us moving."

. . .

Tomlinson's personal car was a deep blue Corolla and to his credit, he didn't even blink when May opened the door and slid into the seat next to him. "I still owe you a raincheck on that Korean food. Which was excellent, by the way, and gave me a story to tell people about one of our new agents. We're pretty much up to a fancy buffet night with this."

The cop put the car into drive, peering up the street to make sure nobody saw the new arrival. "Don't think you'll stick in town long enough to pay up on that."

"I got ways." She jerked her chin towards him. "I want a look at these guys, see what their deal is. And I want to see what they are trying to pull with the body. Either goal first."

"Circle back around on your trackers and sniff 'em out. That's some pro thinking. Now I am curious who the hell all y'all are." Tomlinson changed streets, easily finding the back way towards the station.

She arched an eyebrow at him, amused. "Curious enough to wind up in a federal prison for knowing too much?"

The cop snorted. "Let's see how this gig at the station plays out first, then I might just wanna risk it." He put his police scanner on, checking for anything in the static of an empty band. "Still quiet. They're out of the office at the moment. We work fast, you'll get a look at what they did to Stutgart before they come back."

"Where'd they go?" she asked, guessing the answer.

He confirmed it. "Tossing the motel you guys used. You leave anything?"

She smirked at him. "What do you think?"

Tomlinson laughed. "See, this is why I stay on the street. It's way more interesting and the coffee is better."

. . .

Simmons glanced at the GPS, marking the next freeway exit she needed to use. "Kistler's home was in an apartment complex, looks like. Multiple floors, multiple doors. Sort of place where there's goings on all day and night. Does that complicate getting an entry?"

Her answer was a low and derisive chuckle. "With me handling infiltration? Not hardly. Worst case, Ihighly doubt there's a sorcerer living in such a tenement that's capable of sniffing a few moments of invisibility. What's likelier is we'll simply walk right in." He frowned down at the tablet's notes, considering.

"If someone's there, can you draw them off without incident?" She felt a little relief at his nod. "Right, then." She tapped her thumbs on the wheel. "So we've found ourselves in the middle of something, looks like."

He glanced at her. "I hadn't made an assumption yet either way. You feel more certainly these interlopers were not the source of Stutgart's demise?"

"It's possible, of course, but you must admit it's impractical to reclaim some ownership of the body if they were the ones to previously search it."

"Well, yes, but what if they wanted to be sure nothing was discovered? Ordinary police find the corpse, what of it? They found nothing for they looked for nothing. Specialized eyes, now we're a threat to be identified. A long-view ploy."

"Such a risk, though. If they didn't want to chance anyone seeing anything, why leave the body to be found at all?"

"To see who comes to the bait and then hunt them for some particular purpose."

"My God, but you're an untrusting and pessimistic fellow." She gave a weak laugh.

"It's gotten me this far, alive." He settled back against the passenger's seat, tapping the notes against the dash. "Your assumption is likelier, yes. If for no other reason than I note that things always seem to grow more complicated around this lot." He shook his head. "So, let's think through yours. One faction murders our three, and now another's come to muck up the trail. To what purpose? What value?" He looked out the window to watch the green freeway signs pass by in a flash. "Did we effect this interference, or would they have come to the body regardless?"

"We'll have an answer to that perhaps at Kistler's." The freeway changed with a bump under the tires. In the distance, a gas station winked its lights against the night. "Ugh. I'm dying for a bottle of something to drink and I'm not May. We'll pull over a second."

"You're fine to do so, I think. Nothing's so much as shown an interest in us, except for that one obnoxious man that screamed at us to wash our vehicle."

"You overdid it a little on the dinginess," she said, laughing at his offhanded shrug.

. . .

The medical examiner was dead, shoved into the still-open cube that once held Stutgart. May pushed at the shoulder with a gloved hand to see the results of some final blow, frowning. "Quick and clean. Professional job." She looked back at Broward while Tomlinson kept watch in the doorway. "Better than feds can do," she said, lifting an eyebrow to underline her subtle, grim joke.

Broward shook his head, snapping new photographs of Stutgart where he lay on the examination table. "I hated him, but Jesus. Never wished for this."

"Never?" Tomlinson turned to look at his boss.

"The occasional nasty daydreams of a life without Groquist don't count, Officer." The chief gave him a wry grin, no real mirth in it. He turned back to May. "When you say professional, what exactly do you mean, ma'am?"

"Trained operator, either hired or government. Honestly, if it were government, I probably would have gotten a heads up before someone shoved your guy in the freezer." May let the fresh corpse go. "Moved in fast, got what they needed, cleared out the biggest piece of evidence that they were ever here." She pulled away after that, glancing down at Stutgart. "You guys got a safehouse?"

"I got a place," said Tomlinson. Broward looked at him. "You remember, Chief. I mentioned it once after the Wiesner crash last year and we got drunk as skunks together. I never told anyone else here about it. No paper trail."

May nodded in approval. "Good. My instincts says your trio is still going to come back one more time to wipe you up when they're done sniffing our tracks. I'm gonna make a call when I'm done here, get some people out to keep an eye on the both of you. You've been a huge help, the kind we don't get every day. I want to see you come out the other side of this."

"You're SHIELD," said Broward, convinced. That earned him a sharp glance and he tried to ease it off with a little smile. "Must be some crap we're in here. I wondered. I have a brother in New York, Agent May. He was working just up the street from Stark Tower that day the invasion happened. He still does. Told me he got to see Captain America live and for real. Not everyone forgot that part after the mess you guys got into later." He gestured at Stutgart, changing the topic. "Took the pics I could. You want me to look closer for you, I can. I just gotta go barf first. Looks like they cut out a chunk of his lower spine."

May moved to the table to look for herself, marking the new, roughly carved gap in the corpse. Something about that struck a jangling alert in the back of her mind, one she tagged and identified instantly. That was another phone call she was going to have to make when she got a chance. "More evidence torn out." She shook her head. "The pictures you've got will be fine." She stuck her hand out to take the camera from the police chief, pulling out her phone to jerry-rig it for an upload.

When it was done, she set the camera back down on the counter and then went still, lifting one hand to silence the muttering pair of cops. Instinctively, they obeyed her. Then they heard what she did – the soft, distant footsteps of new arrivals on the floor. May looked up at Tomlinson, her voice whispering in command. "Back way out. Fast."

. . .

"Never been so glad to forget about fixing the emergency system," Broward muttered from where he was hunched behind the thick hedge bordering the station's parking lot. "We'd still be runnin' if the door popped its alarm."

"You might yet have to, if we get too noisy over here." said May. They both took her hint and stilled. Her pocket binoculars were in her hands and she focused in on the back door when she caught movement. Her phone vibrated softly in her jacket, a specific pattern to let her know what backup Phil could muster was on its way for the two cops. "Stay down and quiet." Following her own advice, she slid further into the cover of the bushes, hoping like hell they weren't rolling with heat sensitive devices.

Cagey bastards. The one at the back entrance stuck his head out with deliberate care, just in case whoever they thought might be out there had a bead drawn on him. The thought crossed May's mind before being tossed aside in favor of observance and possible capture and interrogation, if she felt it was necessary.

She watched the tall, studiously generic looking man in the grey suit come out further to survey the terrain around the police station, hands holding a firearm in the low and ready position. He never left partial cover, and beyond the obvious mercenary professionalism, she couldn't read anything else off him at this distance. She swiveled over to check out the other two, coming out of the front hot and angry.

Her own lips pursed, she tried to piece together what she could from reading their lips.

"-wasn't the plan. They're in the wind. You call the boss, tell him-" Head One turned his head away.

"You call him." Head Two shrugged, getting angrier. "We went by the playbook on this. Nobody expected the third party."

Head One swiveled back. "You get a ring back from Kistler's chopshop?"

"Still out there. They got what they-"

May swore under her breath as the second head turned. Then they went back inside. "They've ripped up at least one other victim, snapped our trail. I'm going to assume they've done both."

Tomlinson turned towards her. "Everything else okay?"

She gritted her teeth. "I need to make a couple calls once I've got you two clear. Then I'm just gonna have to hope the new guy can smell a threat as good as he used to before we hired him."

"The suit? He ex-merc himself?"

She exhaled a sharp breath through her nose by way of a laugh. "Not exactly. Come on. Let's get downtown and shelter you up."